When Sally Haddock was applying to vet schools in the seventies, women were the exotics. Now things have improved vastly -- women make up about 75 percent of vet students -- and Haddock has become an expert at exotics, particularly the avian kind. "Birds have great personality," says the spirited blonde author of The Making of a Woman Vet. "They're very curious." Injuries, viral infections, and gastroenteritis are the most common bird ills, but Haddock also deals with obsessive feather-picking, bad diets ("Birds are seed junkies," she says), and "way too many cat bites."

Because blood loss is a major issue with surgery on tiny bird parts, St. Marks, with its laser-surgery machine, is the place in the city for avian operations.

Other exotics that visit the clinic include bearded dragons, potbellied pigs, hedgehogs, ferrets, snakes, and hairy chinchillas ("the cutest things in the whole wide world," says the vet). Soon, after renovations, St. Marks hopes to accommodate fish. "If we have to hospitalize fish," she says, "it would be handy to have an aquarium."